11.29.2009

Emily and I toured Marin to celebrate thanksgiving and take advantage of the break from normal obligations.We started at the Embarcadero BART and rode across the bridge.

Emily winding her way through the wet forests around Samuel P Taylor State Park. We rode up camino alto on the east flank of Mt. Tamalpais, to connect into Sir Frances Drake to the North. Being Thanksgiving, the small tourist strips around Sausalito and Mill Valley were a bit surreal--there was no typical traffic and all the parking spots were empty. The neighborhoods smelled of the day, as well.

At Samuel P Taylor, we found this hike/bike site in the midst of a single redwood grove.

This was the only entrance to our site

Looking up.

The thanksgiving table. Our meal was interrupted by about 10 hungry raccoons who would climb the trees and peer down at us. You can see the mist in the air in the background, too.

We took a night hike down to the stream running through the valley. The forest floor was covered in mushrooms. I used a headlamp to illuminate this long exposure.

As a sidenote, this marks the first post hosted from flickr. I'm resizing photos before I upload, which allows me to avoid the issues with blurriness endemic to picasa's resizing script. The sharpness and quality of the photography is now as it should be. There are a few photos not shown here, but viewable there, as well.

11.23.2009

Thanks for polling. I figured it'd be worthwhile to get some opinions before I started in on a decision, and this has achieved that.

I think I'll create a small-format calendar, perhaps just with a 5x7 image on top (let me know if larger is best). I'd like to find a way for them to be detachable, so after the month was over you'd be able to pass them along as a postcard-like gift that said "hey, ride a bike or keep doing it" to whomever you wished. Sold without profit to me, too.

It'll be a year end celebration, and will reflect a variety of riding--snow, transport, firetrails, among others. It won't happen until the end of December though, I'm cooking up graduate school applications and about to be back on the job hunt in force I'm afraid.

11.22.2009

11.17.2009

The showers peaked between 1230 and 230am last night, so we headed out for a night of stargazing.

These photos are high resolution but picasa does poorly with black skies--you can (should?) click through to the album and open them full size if you want the real deal.

It only took about 250 photos triggered from an automatic timer, but I captured a meteor. The photo is framed by the big dipper to the left, and Leo on the right. If you trace a line out using the stars defining the lower side of the cup, you pass straight through the meteor and can see Regulus--a four star system which forms the brightest point in Leo. I'm pretty happy about the orientation of the meteor, since it can be readily identified as a Leonid. Green, too. There's also a recently discovered rocky exoplanet in Leo, Gliese 436b--with another waiting confirmation (c).

enlarged.

lots of photos without meteors...

I used Emily's Ricoh to do some wide angle site photos while the canon was surveying.

morning over the reservoirs

frost

riding out

A worthwhile trip, you can still catch the showers tonight--they'll be tapering off in frequency from here on out. Early morning is best.

As always, send me an email, message or comment if you want a full resolution photo for personal use--I'll drop the watermark as well.

Finally, here's a good article on streetsblog which examines climate change, personal choice, social ignorance of science, government corruption, copenhagen, and the bicycle. Let's preserve this fragile speck in an infinite cosmos.

11.16.2009

11.14.2009

the lights around the lake were turned off, too late at night. this connects a heavily traveled commuter route and was a significant victory for the ebbc. it is dark during the evening commute now, so i'll try again when lights are moving and will slightly reframe the image